‘Yes.’ He looked at me oddly. Try as I might, I couldn’t decipher the look.
‘And GA?’
‘Gambling Anonymous.’
‘And OA?’ I could hardly keep from laughing. ‘No, let me guess – Olivetti Anonymous – for people who can’t stop using typewriters!’
‘It’s Overeaters Anonymous,’ he said, looking far from amused. His ugly face was like a slab of granite.
‘I see.’ I tried to stop my snorting, embarrassed at having made fun of the AA and NA and GA and all the rest. It might have been funny to me, but it was probably a matter of life and death to these poor bastards.
‘And this is where each activity is held.’ He pointed out another column. I forced myself to look interested. ‘See, today, Friday, two o’clock, Josephine’s group is in the Abbot’s Quarter…’ Everything was held in places with beautiful names like the Conservatory, the Quiet Room and the Reflections Pond.
‘So this is our new lady,’ interrupted a man’s voice.
I turned round. I needn’t have bothered. It was one of the short, tubby, middle-aged men that the place was awash with. Just how many brown acrylic jumpers could one building hold?
‘How are you getting on?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ I said politely.
‘My first day was awful too,’ he said kindly. ‘It gets better.’
‘Does it?’ I asked pitifully. His unexpected kindness made me feel like bursting into tears.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Then it gets worse again.’ He said it as though it was the punchline to a joke and threw back his head and laughed uproariously. After a while he calmed down a bit and reached out his hand and shook mine. ‘Peter’s the name.’
‘Rachel.’ I managed to smile back at him. Although I would have preferred to punch him.
‘Don’t mind me,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Sure, I’m stone-mad.’
I soon discovered that Peter had a great sense of humour and laughed at everything, even the terrible things. Especially the terrible things.
I would quickly grow to hate him.
‘Come and have a cup of tea before we start group,’ he invited.
Self-consciously, I poured myself a cup of tea, the first of several thousand (even though I hated tea) and sat at the table. I was instantly surrounded by men, unfortunately none of them either young or good-looking, who wanted to know all about me.
‘You’ve lovely long hair,’ said a man wearing a – no, it couldn’t be! A pyjama top, yes, it was a pyjama top. And a mustard cardigan. His own hair was almost nonexistent, but despite that he had some strands swept over his bald pate from the base of one ear right over to the other. It looked as if it had been superglued to his scalp. He gave me a sickly smile and moved slightly closer.
‘Is it naturally that black?’
‘Er, yes,’ I said, trying to hide my alarm, as he began to stroke it.
‘Hahaha,’ went Peter the comedian from further along the table. ‘I’d say that wasn’t the colour you were born with, all the same. WHA-hahaha!’
I was too busy sitting rigid, waiting for the hairstroker to move away, to be badly offended by Peter. I pressed myself as far back into my chair as I could go but, when he didn’t stop fawning and touching, pressed back even harder. Then Mike, who had been smoking a cigarette and staring moodily into the middle distance, seemed to come to, and shouted ‘Down Clarence, down! Leave the girl alone.’
Clarence reluctantly unhanded me.
‘He means no harm,’ explained Mike as, for about the fifteenth time that day, I fought back the tears. ‘Just tell him to piss off.’
‘Of course I don’t mean any harm,’ exclaimed Clarence, looking hurt and surprised. ‘She has beautiful hair. What’s wrong with that?’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asked again, thrusting his face into mine.
‘No… nothing,’ I managed, horrified.
‘Whose group are you in?’ A man with the reddest face I had ever seen skill-lessly changed the subject.
‘What’s this group thing?’ I asked, breathing freely as Clarence pulled back from me.
‘You might have gathered that we do a lot of group therapy,’ explained Mike. They all laughed at that. I didn’t know why, but I smiled anyway so they wouldn’t think I was a stuck-up cow. ‘And we’re divided into groups of about six or seven. There’s three groups, Josephine’s, The Sour Kraut’s and Barry Grant’s.’
‘The Sour Kraut?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘Her real name is Heidi,’ said Puce Features.
‘Helga,’ interrupted Peter.
‘Helga, Heidi, whatever,’ said Redface. ‘Anyway, we hate her. And she’s German.’
‘Why do you hate her?’ That prompted an outburst of laughter.
‘Because she’s our counsellor,’ someone explained. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll hate your one too.’
Actually, I won’t, I felt like saying, but didn’t.
‘And Barry Grant?’ I enquired.
‘She’s from Liverpool.’
‘I see. Well, I’m in Josephine’s group.’ I was disappointed that I hadn’t got one of the ones with the funny names.
There was an immediate chorus of ‘Not Sister Josephine!’ and ‘Oh Jaysus’ and ‘She’s as tough as nails that one’ and ‘She’d make a grown man cry’ and ‘She did made a grown man cry’
That last remark started a row between – if I had their names right, and I mightn’t have had, because most of the men seemed to blend into one – Vincent and Clarence, the hairstroker.
‘I wasn’t crying,’ protested Clarence. ‘I had a cold.’
‘You were crying,’ insisted Vincent, who seemed to be very argumentative.
You wouldn’t catch me having a row with anyone, I thought. I’d just do my time and leave. In and out. Befriend no one. (Unless they were rich and famous, of course.) Offend no one.
The argument was interrupted by someone saying ‘Here’s Misty.’
All the men shifted uncomfortably. Misty, I presumed, was the beautiful girl, who had strolled languidly across the room, her head held high. Even though she was just wearing jeans and a green jumper, she was stunning. I immediately felt overdressed. She had long red hair, so long that she could sit on it. If she was so inclined, of course. And she was skinny and delicate and appeared to have aloofness down to a fine art.